Characterization of Active Layer Thickening Rate over the Northern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Permafrost Region Using ALOS Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Data, 2007–2009

Remote Sensing

Kuo-Hsin Tseng¹  Kamil Erkan²  Chung-Yen Kuo³  Lei Zhang⁴  Xiaoli Ding⁴  C. K. Shum⁵  Kun Shang⁵  Yuanyuan Jia⁵  Yuchan Yi⁵  Zhong Lu⁶  Jin-Woo Kim⁶ 

[1] Center for Space and Remote Sensing Research, National Central University, 32001 Taoyuan, Taiwan;Department of Civil Engineering, Marmara University, 34722 Istanbul, Turkey;Department of Geomatics, National Cheng Kung University, 70101 Tainan, Taiwan;Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China;Division of Geodetic Science, School of Earth Science, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA;Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275, USA;

关键词: permafrost;    active layer thickness (ALT);    AL thickening rate;    InSAR;    Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP);   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs9010084

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP), also known as the Third Pole and the World Water Tower, is the largest and highest plateau with distinct and competing surface and subsurface processes. It is covered by a large layer of discontinuous and sporadic alpine permafrost which has degraded 10% during the past few decades. The average active layer thickness (ALT) increase rate is approximately 7.5 cm·yr−1 from 1995 to 2007, based on soil temperature measurements from 10 borehole sites along Qinghai-Tibetan Highway, and approximately 6.3 cm·yr−1, 2006–2010, using soil temperature profiles for 27 monitoring sites along Qinghai-Tibetan railway. In this study, we estimated the ALT and its AL thickening rate in the northern QTP near the railway using ALOS PALSAR L-band small baseline subset interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SBAS-InSAR) data observed land subsidence and the corresponding ALT modeling. The InSAR estimated ALT and AL thickening rate were validated with ground-based observations from the borehole site WD4 within our study region, indicating excellent agreement. We concluded that we have generated high spatial resolution (30 m) and spatially-varying ALT and AL thickening rates, 2007–2009, over approximately an area of 150 km2 of permafrost-covered region in the northern QTP.

【 授权许可】

Unknown